Page 7 of Returning for His Unknown Son

“No, I don’t. It’s been eight years, Christian. I know how to take care of myself, but you...you...”

One dark blond brow rose in that stunningly good-looking face. His arms folded at his abdomen, he towered over her. “It’s good to see you’re still that Goody Two-shoes who turns pink at the mere thought of a curse word.” The flash of his white teeth against that dirty blond beard rendered him stunning.

“You,” she poked him again, moving closer, “arrogant,” another poke, “smug,” once more even harder, “bastard.”

The humor in his eyes deepened, turning them a dark gray blue. That glimmering, almost wicked challenge with which he’d always greeted her was back. And something more—a darker emotion she couldn’t quite identify.

“I don’t need to be rescued anymore.”

“And yet you stand there in that soaking-wet dress, spitting mad at me,” he said, the scent of him coiling around her, “when your first thought should be for yourself.”

“It would serve you right if I did catch pneumonia again and died on you. Then you’d know how it feels to be left behind.” She regretted the childish declaration the moment she made it.

Insult over injury came in the form of a sneeze. Then came one more and then another, until her head felt like it would explode. Her breathing turned shallow, and she shivered again.

How very like the universe to mess with her in this moment.

Christian’s smile disappeared and a flurry of the filthiest curses she’d ever heard painted the air. The scent of him assaulted her nostrils. In the next blink—or was it the next sneeze?—Priya was suspended over his shoulder, hanging upside down.

For a few stunned seconds, she wondered if she was in one of those strangely feverish dreams she’d had of him so many times. If she was going to wake up and find herself scrabbling through the covers looking for that warm, male body, only to discover she was alone again.

But the dig of his hard shoulder into her belly was far too real to ignore. As were his back muscles against her chest and his abdomen at her thighs. The thin linen of his shirt had dried and his skin through the material was warm against her chin. Whatever outrage Priya could’ve mustered dissipated like morning mist as warmth from his body tingled all over her. Her sinuses were happy for the ride and her head cleared of the shock that had taken over ever since she’d spied his figure waiting for her.

She considered punching his broad back with her fists just to affect outrage. Instead she sighed and hung on.

Challenging Christian with her mortality had been at best a cheap shot and at worst, a cruel joke. Didn’t matter if he deserved it or not. Death of the people he cared about—even as a joke—wasn’t something he could ever tolerate.

With her slung over his shoulder, he walked up the wide staircase without breaking for a breath. Her eyes fell on the huge portrait of him hanging on the wall on the landing. Laughter burst out of her, cleansing the last remnants of grief, washing away the niggling doubt that all this was nothing but another dream she’d have to wake up from.

Her breath grunted out of her when he hitched her higher on the shoulder and then she did call him a thousand names. The curses came as if she’d stored them up for eight years. His laughter exploded around them, his chest rumbling against her belly, sending a quiver of sensation up and down her body.

He kicked the door of the master bedroom open—his room that was now hers—and walked past the huge king bed that had been custom made to accommodate his six-foot-three-inch frame, as he liked to sprawl out. Past the dresser with a framed picture of them on their wedding day eight and a half years ago.

Her in a simple off-white knee-length dress and Christian in his black leather jacket with a white shirt underneath and blue jeans. Standing outside the city hall. There wasn’t the usual joy or laughter or love that was found in pictures of a newly married couple. They had married purely for convenience, after all. But there had at least been trust between them.

Despite never understanding her strange, unbearable attraction to him after losing Jai, Priya had always trusted him. Because Jai, the common thread that had bound them to each other, that had brought them together, had trusted him implicitly.

Of course, Christian hadn’t simply abandoned her. That wasn’t something he’d do. Was it?

She couldn’t be sure, because they were little more than strangers now. And yet he was also her husband and, even more important, he was the father of her son.

Priya’s feet hit the cold, solid black marble floor of the vast bathroom as Christian gently put her down. But she’d never felt less sure of the ground under her feet.

CHAPTER THREE

“UNZIPME.”

Christian’s head jerked in the direction of that soft command so fast that it wouldn’t be surprising if he’d permanently damaged his neck.

Her dark, damp hair pulled away from her neck, Priya looked at him over her shoulder. Her brown eyes glittered with a challenge that struck him, hard and deep. He held her gaze, not caring what she saw in his. Then because he was a greedy bastard parched for sustenance, he let it rove over her with a thoroughly possessive attitude he didn’t even try to curb.

For so many years he’d wondered if she was the product of his imagination. Of some illusion his mind was weaving because of a deep-seated need to discover who he was. The intense quality of those dreams about her, his mindless obsession with her, had kept him going. As if she was the tugboat he needed to hold on to to eventually reach the shore.

Even when he hadn’t been able to remember who he was, battling the blackness in his head year after year, her face had stood out in his mind, wreathed in shadows. Bits and pieces of her beckoning him closer. From the straight little nose and the wide mouth to the cascading silk of her jet-black hair.

Now that he was here, staring at her, that desperate need he’d felt then was multiplied a thousand times. He drank her in, noting little details that had remained hazy in those dreams. He had a feeling it would take him a decade or more to fill in the smudged picture of her he’d carried inside his damaged memory for so long. Another decade to note all the new facets of her.

His wife—Christian refused to think of her any other way—looked like a goddess. A siren he was ready to surrender to, with pleasure.

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